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To the typically male bastion of lethal secret agents such as James Bond and Jason Bourne, you can now add the female name that graces the title of this confidently written cloak and dagger. Nicole is the twenty-something French wife of an urbane Paris jeweler who takes for granted his lithe and lovely mate. Less than fulfilled, she acquiesces to his chauvinist attitude and even accepts his country mistress in exchange for satisfaction in bed and support for her aging mother and grandmother. Then she is recruited by a clandestine governmental agency in America and suddenly her life becomes a whirlwind of excitement and danger. Realizing resources within herself that were always there but subjugated to the desires of others, she quickly blossoms into an intellectual and physical dynamo. Her double life as Gallic wife and gallant operative encompasses saving a kidnapped child, dispatching a rogue agent, protecting a government informer, stopping a stalker, and saving an elderly sophisticate from the clutches of cunning underlings with murder on their minds.
Episodic in approach, the novel cuts back and forth between Nicole’s life in Paris and her many missions in the United States. The author shows a firm grasp of both the attitudes and avenues of The City of Light, as well as that of America’s multi-faceted Atlantic coast. Baroody’s characters are sharply drawn and vividly depicted. Their actions are credible and their dialogue believable, whether it’s coming from a military lifer, a self-important sophisticate, a French seamstress, a Gypsy fortuneteller, or an abominably overbearing bully. For readers who appreciate smart, skillful heroines who are as concerned with and capable of kindness as they are kickboxing, this novel should more than fill the bill.